Downtown revitalizations are happening around Georgia. New businesses are popping up and new jobs are being created.

Families are enjoying the sense of place that downtowns provide, and existing businesses are benefitting from the increased activity. Lots of wonderful things are happening in Georgia cities, and a quality of life is being created that is second to none.

Do you make a lot of notes to yourself? You know, lists of what to do and what not to do?

I am horrible about that. I’m not the type of person who runs into the grocery store every day just to pick up a few things. I have to start four or five days in advance to make what I believe to be a complete list of groceries so I don’t have to go but every two or three weeks.

A majority of Republican lawmakers, with the assistance of Democrats, approved what has been accurately described as a “massive tax increase” that will generate more than $900 million a year for highway and bridge projects.

The highway bill includes a substantial increase in the gasoline excise tax, a new tax on hotel rooms, and a yearly charge of $200 or $300 on electric vehicles. The tax hikes were strongly supported by the three most powerful Republicans at the Gold Dome: Gov. Nathan Deal, Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, and Speaker David Ralston.

I think that makes me more fortunate than most. I say that because most people tend to meet police at some of the worst times of their lives.

I’ve been there, too. Traffic tickets and accidents and family tragedies, we all have.

For some, those unfortunate circumstances are the only times they encounter police officers on the job and good or bad, they come away from those experiences with a general impression that can color all future interactions with someone wearing a badge.

When I retort, “Why do you care if I carry my purse,” he questions what I keep in it. He remarks on its size and weight.

He accuses it of slowing me down. He accuses me of trying to keep up with it. I think he feels like he’s competing with it. Whatever his reasons, he’s purse-plexed about why my purse is so heavy if the only thing in it I ever use is a tube of lipstick.

It agitates him to see my purse hanging from my arm. For him, it’s purse-onal.

Isn’t it interesting how, in today’s America, some of the most outspoken critics of bigotry turn out themselves to be manifestly intolerant and determined to visit cruelty on others because they harbor different opinions?

These inquisitors often parade their outrage as a morally superior defense of rights, and it’s sometimes surely the case that iniquities they themselves experienced or witnessed reside at the heart of their fury.